BMW Goes Slightly Mad, Announces 4 Series Gran Coupe

I think that someone, somewhere inside BMW’s striking headquarters in Munich (which is in Germany, thank you) is about to be made “redundant”. Either that, or the pervading sense of German pragmatism has been unceremoniously defenestrated from the offices of BMW’s marketing, branding, and long-term planning executives. How else could they justify something like the newly announced 4 Series Gran Coupe? Let me provide a little background information:

BMW has recently nailed down a new branding strategy for the range of vehicles they make, specifically pertaining to coupes and sedans. All the even-numbered cars will have two doors, and the odd-numbered cars, four doors. So, there will be no more 1 Series or 3 Series coupes; these models will be sedan only. Similarly, the new 2 Series and 4 Series cars will have only two doors apiece, having been culled from the architecture of their four-door precursors. Follow me so far?

The 5 Series and 6 Series were already established in this manner, so no worries there, but many BMW enthusiasts are decrying the end of the 3 Series coupe. BMW, in turn, protests that it still exists, only that it’s going to be called the 4 Series, and that there will be no need to specify that it’s a coupe because the 4 Series will ever be only a two-door vehicle.

So with that in mind, BMW has now announced the 4 Series Gran Coupe, which, contrary to what the nomenclature might have you believe, is a sedan. So we now have the four-door version of the two-door car that was going to be the two-door version of the four-door car. Make sense? Yeah, me neither. Essentially what you’d be doing is buying a 3 Series with the 4 Series front end stuck on. Niche marketing is a strange, strange thing.

Trim levels will range from the 428i at the bottom end, packing a 2.0L 4-cylinder turbo developing 240hp, up to the top-end 435i, which touts a 3.0L turbo 6-cylinder making 300bhp, pretty much the same as the 3 Series. It’s a little longer, a little lower, a little wider than the 3 Series, and, of course, sportier, but these things will pass straight over the heads of the average buyer. The only way I could really see justifying the extra expense for one is if you simply cannot live without the 4 Series’ superior looks, or the knowledge that you spent just a little more than Bob down the street, because your bonus was bigger than his at the end of last quarter. Honestly.